MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Extensions to the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) used in IP-based networks for e-mail. MIME was developed to overcome SMTP’s ASCII limitation, which supports only plain text, i.e., unformatted text. MIME standards, as defined in the IETF RFC 2045, include a number of types and subtypes that support a range of data formats. Those types include the following: • text type for textual messages. Subtypes include plain text for 7-bit ASCII, and rich text for enhanced text formatting. • image type for image files. Subtypes include Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). 74570c13.qxd 9/11/07 12:25 PM Page 312 |